Would it be possible for greedy/unethical publishers to pay individuals at cybercafes to click those adsense links? I’m asking this question because there are unofficial reports of Malaysians getting more than USD1,000/month despite lowly hits averaging 500 to 1,000/day. It does not make any sense because an average of 50 hits/day would probably resulted in 1 or two clicks only. One of them had appeared in a Malaysian monthly magazine featuring money matters.
It's definitely possible for them to do this. The problem is that it is extremely risky to do this and it's against Google's ToS. Google have various methods in place to detect unusual click patterns. These webmasters might get away with it for a few months at the most and then Google will most likely flag their acccounts and ban them.
Google has systems in place to easily check where the clicks are coming from, how many, etc. So putting up a notice in cyber cafes or anywhere else telling people to click on adsense ads will get noticed by google real quick. Neat idea...I never thought of that one! Blanket Des Moines with flyers, telling people to get online, go to my sites, click on adsense! The Iowa Dawg
I agree and I am sure Google will start looking at site more closley the higher the payouts that site has, thats if Google is smart enough which I believe they are.
Crusader, Iowa Dawg & turfsniffer, Thanks a million for your inputs. Yes, Google is monitoring figures of exceptionally high Page CTR. 10% and above would certainly invites investigation. But it would go undetected if one prepares a number of sites and get Adsense accounts under different “trusted†names and recruit secretly guys who frequently use cyber cafes. Obviously one is not going to blanket Des Moines with flyers announcing “Want to surf free. Let us pay your bills. Call ….., SMS …. Or email …..†I’m not talking about making in excess of USD1,000 but USD100 to USD500 is possible to cover visits to the pubs. Ensure no identical IP address for 2 or more clicks at the same URLs. Since many cyber cafes in Malaysia (mostly unregulated by the relevant authorities) are using several lines there would be many PCs with different IP addresses.
This thread is new but it is already getting a good number of views. Let this thread have more inputs and assist Google to detect those bad guys. Or giving more ideas to potential cheaters? Every coin has two sides
A crook, a spammer, a fraudulent person... would go to all the trouble of setting up various google accounts, using different names, addresses, etc. But they will get caught! Someone in some cafe will say, I am going to ask google about this. And bingo, google will go after the bad guys. Who knows, google may even block Malaysia from the system? The Iowa Dawg
Yes iowadawg is right it would take a lot of trouble to set something up like this, using various accounts, locations IP address and it sure is the way to go to have a whole country banned from Adsense if it becomes costly to Google - I am sure they wouldn’t think twice about removing their Adsense service from a country that is scamming them, unfair to the 'real' users. If Google just so happens to stumble across this thread, which I am sure they do read happenings on DP (hello Google ) you can be sure they will chase down his Malaysian monthly magazine and start working on a prevention which they probably already have in place.
Thanks for the timely warnings to crooks, spammers and fraudulent persons (and would-bes) wherever they are. Not fair to profile Malaysians only since it is a global issue. To those having measly low hits but had been making tons out of Adsense … beware. There are still a large number of good guys who want to earn a bit for sourcing and updating their beloved sites for the benefits of Netizens. Don’t allow turkeys killing the geese.
No its not fair and I am confident there are worse places that commit fraud, after all scammers are everywhere. It was interesting to see them come out of the woodwork when I started selling gadgets on eBay and the countries they were in. Click Fraud puts Googles business, the Adwords clients business & Adsense clients business at risk so we can be sure that Google have invested a lot of money in tracking all this - I wonder how much
Its not true that with 50 uniques only 1 will click... a lot of sites have somethign around 10 to 25 clicks from 50 uniques
Turnsniffer, Thanks for your active participation and your understanding that it is unfair to profile the majority of Malaysians (being scammers).